In his directorial debut, Mac, Turturro picked up kudos from the Cannes Film Festival, Robert Altman and others for his penetrating look at masculinity in a working class environment. With his second film, Illuminata, Turturro explored one of his other loves, the theater, at the turn of the last century.

Once again returning to a working class neighborhood, in his latest film, Romance and Cigarettes¸ Turturro looks at love – old, new, seasoned, saucy, naughty and nice.

Nick (James Ganndolfini) is a New York ironworker busted by his wife Kitty (Susan Sarandon) for his adulterous affair with Tula (Kate Winslet). With their three daughters (Mandy Moore, Mary-Louise Parker, Aida Turturro) and her cousin (Christopher Walken) on her side, Kitty makes life a domestic hell for Nick. No matter what he does he cannot be forgiven. But he does continue his raucous relationship with Tula to ease his pain.

In what could be an otherwise typical love story – albeit bolstered by a solid cast – Turturro pulls in some sorts of twisty tropes to make a film about escapism which does not lend itself to escapism as his characters usage of songs and imaginations to explain their pains, desires and fears, break down that fourth wall a la Bertolt Brecht against Aristotle.

Obviously passionate about this love of labor for many years, Turturro spoke to us in this exclusive interview about the film, it’s music, its lack of politics and Tom Hanks.

Los Angeles Journal: I understand you had the idea to make this film back while making Barton Fink. Why did you feel now was the time to make the film?

John Turturro: I was basically thinking about it before Barton Fink, really. When I was being Barton Fink, I did all this research about the period, the writers and going to secretarial school to improve my typing. I wanted to be working on something so I wasn’t acting. I was doing something. So I wrote a lot of ideas down for it. Then I sat on it for a while. In my second film I had this fantasy musical sequence and that just opened up something in my brain. Then my friend told me I should look at Dennis Potter  who I always heard about. I watched a little of that; I tried not to watch too much of it. Then I read a book of interviews with him. He was talking about how his father was a miner and how people used popular music to escape their surroundings. That really struck a chord with me because I grew up in a tiny house bursting with music. Everybody had his or her own individual soundtrack running [Laughs]. Then one year when I did O Brother Where Art Thou and The Man Who Cried, I decided to sit down, take some time off and put all my notes together. Then it just kind of wrote itself, basically.

LAJ: Why did you choose to juxtapose a kind of Aristoliean  narrative with modern elements?

JT: Basically I tried to use music as people do in everyday life. Most of the time they sing along with their private soundtrack. Sometimes they lip-sync it in their own imagination. The love story is a love triangle and that’s been done many, many times, but basically every single story in the world has been done. It depends on how you tell a story. In the Greek plays there’s music, dance and chorus. That’s something that’s been used in Shakespeare’s time. I’ve done a lot of theater and I like opera. Everyone usually dies in opera [Laughs]. It’s not like you decide to do something, you have an impulse to do it.

LAJ: How come you did not put yourself into the film?

JT: I had a lot to do [Laughs]. I was kind of a backup. If I needed myself to come in…With so much to do, I thought this would be a good time to explore not being in it.

LAJ: Do have a preference between being in front of the camera and being behind it.

JT: When I’m working with a great director that’s always a joy and I feel like doing that. But a lot of times working in movies or difficult circumstances – when the script isn’t ready or something like that – it can be arduous. I only have directed movies that meant something to me. I’ve been offered to do other movies. After my first movie I got a lot of offers to do mainstream, Hollywood films and I just was not interested. If I’m not that interested in being in it as an actor then why would I want to spend two years of my life on something?

LAJ: So you see it more demanding to direct than act?

JT: Oh absolutely. You’re the person who’s in charge of everything. As in actor, if you’re playing a role where you’re in every scene and it’s a really demanding part that’s difficult, too. But directing is more difficult.

LAJ: Often musicals set in working class neighborhoods glamorize those neighborhoods yet you kept yours real –

JT: Well I never saw it as a musical. I thought of it as a love story with music. I wanted to tell a story about real people who use their imagination. These are the people Bruce Springsteen writes songs about. And these are the people that buy his records. I kind of wanted to meld the world of Charles Bukowski with Bruce Springsteen. I kind of know that world. Etta James was a big influence on the movie even though there’s no song of hers in it. I was actually offered a book of Bukowski’s to adapt a long time ago and I couldn’t figure out how to do it, but it kind of opened me up to reading all his work and everything. You want to do stuff that’s modern. When I saw Hedwig and the Angry Inch  I thought that was a modern way to use music in a movie and certainly Dennis Potter  done that. Musicals were in a different vernacular. You kind of have to reinvent the vernacular.

LAJ: Were the songs in the film your first choices? Did you have to change to others because of rights issues?

JT: The first song, “A Man Without Love” was always in my head. I kind of grew up with it. It’s kind of schmaltzy. The last song was always in my mind. After than I basically chose songs that helped me propel the plot. The only song that I had in the back of my head that I definitely wanted to put in the subplot was “Delilah.” I listened to literally thousands of songs and then hoped I could get the rights to the song.

LAJ: How much of the budget did the musical rights consume?

JT: We worked very hard. We were very honest with people about the publishing and the performance. Once Bruce Springsteen  came aboard he kind of helped us and brought it in for a really good price.

LAJ: Why did you not bring in larger social issues affecting working class neighborhoods at this time?

JT: That’s kind of a funny question. You can’t cover everything in a film.

LAJ: You talked about modernizing it so I was wondering why there are no contemporary references. This film could have taken place in a number of years.

JT: That was always the idea. You’re basically dealing with all forms of love – long period of love, adultery, young love, mad love, lust. I was trying to explore the profane and the sacred in the movie. I don’t actually like when people use up-to-date references. You haven’t digested it. There’s no digestion when it’s too of the moment. A lot of those films this season people didn’t want to go see because you see it every day. That had nothing to do with my narrative. I was talking about sensibility being modern. You have to choose what your story is. I wasn’t interested in politics. The politics between men and women is what the movie is about. That’s a complex thing, you know, because that colors the way you look at the rest of life.

LAJ: Lastly, what do you think about interviews where you discuss you and your work? Does it serve the film? Should the work speak for itself?

JT: Occasionally it’s helpful. I would rather watch stuff and be surprised by it. It’s good if it’s really in depth and you’re illuminating something for people. But you make something for it to stand on its own. Listen, it’s always interesting to talk to people when they’ve responded to something after they’ve seen it and responded. When I was younger it was easier to see people give an interview or whatever. It kind of helped me to watch them do different things. But now you see Tom Hanks giving all these interviews. He’s a wonderful actor but I don’t know if it helps me forget who he is. If I didn’t know anything about him, it helps me believe whom he’s playing more. I’m just using Tom as an example because he’s a wonderful actor. Especially as an actor -- with the director it’s kind of your job to introduce, at least, what you were going for. But still, the thing has to stand on its own.

Romance & Cigarettes Review

By Ed Rampell

This is a film for diehard indie fans, co-starring some pretty heavyweight actors in offbeat roles that Hollywood central casting wouldn’t consider them for. As Tony Soprano, James Gandolfini got to whack people, but in Romance & Cigarettes he gets to act wacky, and to sing in this odd musical directed by John Turturro. Part of the appeal of Tony was that here was an overweight, not handsome, proletarian middle aged man with money and an attractive wife who got to schtup even sexier, younger women. In Romance, as Nick Murder, Gandolfini cheats on his wife Kitty (Susan Sarandon) and has an affair with Tula (Kate Winslet).

The cast also includes Steve Buscemi (who had a recurring role in HBO’s The Sopranos), Mary-Louise Parker, Christopher Walken and Eddie Izzard as a preacher.

Turturro is primarily known as an actor (he was rather memorably cast as a  pizza maker in Spike Lee’s 1989 Do the Right Thing), and this is his third outing behind the camera, directing a film. An important element of musicals has been how to weave the songs and dances in with the rest of the realistic action.

The first half of what Turturro has called a "rock opera" is good fun, with the actors dancing and sometimes singing their own non-original songs. As the old married couple now estranged, Gandolfini and Sarandon croon Irving Berlin’s The Girl That I Marry. Other numbers include Janis Joplin's hit with Big Brother and the Holding Company, Piece of My Heart; Elvis’ Trouble written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, and James Brown’s It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World.

Another denizen of Queens, Cyndi Lauper (whom I went to Richmond Hill High School with), famously sang Girls Just Want to Have Fun. In this musical Turturro is saying: though they may not be as eloquent as a Shakespeare sonnet, even workers, the salt of the Earth, want love, romance and sex.

About midway through this whirligig of a production the Cigarettes portion of the title kicks in, and the movie makes a sudden right turn, as a lighthearted farce unexpectedly (unless you read this review first) turns into a heavy drama. Suffice it to say that years of smoking tobacco catches up with the aptly named Nick Murder. Smoking is truly one of the worst habits known to humanity.

I saw this rollicking musical-cum-tragedy two and a half years ago in a tiny theatre in Zurich. It’s good that American audiences will finally have a chance to catch up with Romance – but forget those bloody Cigarettes!